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For Immediate Release
December, 17 2024, 02:11pm EDT
Tuesday December, 17 2024, 02:11pm EDT
Contact:
Seth Gladstone - sgladstone@fwwatch.org
Biden’s LNG Export Study is a Weak Response to Inherent Harms of the Industry
WASHINGTON - News reports indicate that the Biden administration is preparing to release a report that will detail numerous harms to communities, consumers and the global climate from expanded domestic liquid natural gas (LNG) exporting. However, the report will apparently not specifically call for a rejection of pending and future LNG export permits..
In response, Food & Water Watch Policy Director Jim Walsh issued the following statement:
“This study mirrors the Biden administration’s entire four-year approach to advancing a clean energy future: weak and half-hearted. Liquid natural gas exports systematically poison the most vulnerable frontline communities, pollute our air and water, and drive up domestic energy prices. We cannot continue to be victimized by the profit-driven agenda of fossil fuel corporations. President Biden must listen to the warnings of his own government by banning further LNG exports and rejecting pending LNG permits before he leaves office.
“Secretary Granholm's admission that continuing LNG exports will drive up costs and harm vulnerable communities is a sad reflection on what we have been saying for the last decade. It is time for this administration to start matching its rhetoric with action, and reject new LNG exports while it still can.”
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
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Sanders Takes Oligarchy Fight to Appalachia With Standing-Room-Only Crowd in West Virginia
"Whoever said West Virginia was a conservative state?" Sanders asked the crowd in Wheeling. "Somebody got it wrong."
Aug 09, 2025
On the latest leg of his Fighting Oligarchy Tour, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders headed to West Virginia for rallies on Friday and Saturday where he continued to speak out against the billionaire class's control over the political system and the Republican Party's cuts to healthcare, food assistance, and other social programs for millions of Americans—and prove that his message resonates with working people even in solidly red districts.
"Whoever said West Virginia was a conservative state?" Sanders (I-Vt.) asked a roaring, standing-room-only crowd at the Capitol Theater in Wheeling. "Somebody got it wrong."
As the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported, some in the crowd sported red bandanas around their necks—a nod to the state's long history of labor organizing and the thousands of coal mine workers who formed a multiracial coalition in 1921 and marched wearing bandanas for the right to join a union with fair pay and safety protections.
Sanders spoke to the crowd about how President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which was supported by all five Republican lawmakers who represent the districts Sanders is visiting this weekend, could impact their families and neighbors.
"Fifteen million Americans, including 50,000 right here in West Virginia, are going to lose their healthcare," Sanders said of the Medicaid cuts that are projected to amount to more than $1 trillion over the next decade. "Cuts to nutrition—literally taking food out of the mouths of hungry kids."
Seven hospitals are expected to shut down in the state as a result of the law's Medicaid cuts, and 84,000 West Virginians will lose Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, according to estimates.
Sanders continued his West Virginia tour with a stop in the small town of Lenore on Saturday afternoon and was scheduled to address a crowd in Charleston Saturday evening before heading to North Carolina for more rallies on Sunday.
The event in Lenore was a town hall, where the senator heard from residents of the area—which Trump won with 74% of the vote in 2024. Anna Bahr, Sanders' communications director, said more than 400 people came to hear the senator speak—equivalent to about a third of Lenore's population.
Sanders invited one young attendee on stage after she asked how Trump's domestic policy law's cuts to education are likely to affect poverty rates in West Virginia, which are some of the highest in the nation.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act includes a federal voucher program which education advocates warn will further drain funding from public schools, and the loss of Medicaid funding for states could lead to staff cuts in K-12 schools. The law also impacts higher education, imposing new limits for federal student loans.
"Sometimes I am attacked by my opponents for being far-left, fringe, out of touch with where America is," said Sanders. "Actually, much of what I talk about is exactly where America is... You are living in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, and if we had good policy and the courage to take on the billionaire class, there is no reason that every kid in this country could not get an excellent higher education, regardless of his or her income. That is not a radical idea."
Sanders' events scheduled for Sunday in North Carolina include a rally at 2:00 pm ET at the Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts in Greensboro and one at 6:00 pm ET at the Harrah Cherokee Center in Asheville.
Hundreds Arrested In London for Opposing Ban on Nonviolent Group Palestine Action
"Let us be under no illusion," said one organizer. "The government is criminalizing the people of Britain for standing up against the biggest genocide of the 21st century, as it's livestreamed from Gaza."
Aug 09, 2025
British campaigners reported Saturday that the sheer volume of people who showed up in London's Parliament Square to support the nonviolent advocacy group Palestine Action presented a major challenge for the Metropolitan Police, who had threatened to arrest anyone supporting the organization.
The campaign group Defend Our Juries reported that as of 4:00 pm local time, at least 200 people had been arrested for joining the protest, where more than 1,000 sat silently in the square with many displaying signs that read: "I oppose genocide. I support Palestine Action."
Others held signs reading, "Is this why you joined the police?" as officers arrested demonstrators including National Health Service workers; a blind man using a wheelchair; author Jonathon Porritt; and former Guantánamo Bay detainee Moazzam Begg, who now advocates for wrongly-imprisoned people swept up in the War on Terror.
"The fact that unprecedented numbers came out today risking arrest and possible imprisonment, shows how repulsed and ashamed people are about our government's ongoing complicity in a livestreamed genocide, and the lengths people are prepared to go to defend this country's ancient liberties," said a spokesperson for Defend Our Juries, which also organized a protest last month where more than two dozen people were arrested.
The protests have been held to demand that the government reverse its June decision to proscribe Palestine Action as a terrorist organization after it vandalized two military airplanes. The ban on the organization means that anyone who publicly supports Palestine Action risks up to 14 years in prison.
Palestine Action was formed in 2020 to demand an end to Israeli apartheid policies in the occupied Palestinian territories including Gaza and the West Bank. It has organized nonviolent actions since Israel began bombarding Gaza and blockading nearly all humanitarian aid in October 2023—killing more than 61,000 Palestinians, injuring more than 150,000, creating the largest per capita population of child amputees in the world, and starving at least 212 people so far.
"Palestine Action and people holding cardboard signs present no danger to the public at large, whereas the people who have lobbied for this ban—the arms companies and Israel lobbies—have the blood of 60,000 Palestinians on their hands," said Defend Our Juries.
The government's ban, announced by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, faces a legal challenge scheduled to be heard by the U.K. High Court in November. The court granted a full judicial review to Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori.
United Nations human rights chief Volker Türk warned last month that the U.K.'s proscription of the group "is at odds with the U.K.'s obligations under international human rights law" and noted that "according to international standards, terrorist acts should be confined to criminal acts intended to cause death or serious injury or to the taking of hostages"—not property damage.
Defend Our Juries said the mass arrest of Palestinian rights advocates is taking place as Britain continues to provide support to the Israeli military, which is moving towards a full takeover of Gaza under the orders of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"They're being arrested for holding signs in opposition to genocide and the ban of Palestine Action," said the group as hundreds of people were carried away from Parliament Square by Metropolitan Police. "Meanwhile, the ones enabling the mass murder of Palestinians face no consequences."
Support from civil society groups for Palestine Action and the organizations demanding a reversal of the ban grew this past week ahead of the protest. More than 300 Jewish Britons including film director Mike Leigh; children's author Michael Rosen; and Geoffrey Bindman, a former legal instructor to Prime Minister Keir Starmer, calling the ban "illegitimate" in a letter to Downing Street.
"The government should stop deflecting attention from genocide by linking nonviolent protest to terrorism," read the letter.
Begg noted Saturday that "historically, civil disobedience has been employed in this country, as well as by the American civil rights movement and the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, to challenge unjust and oppressive laws."
"This action is not about Palestine Action, but wider issues of how anti-terror legislation curtails basic freedoms and undermines the rule of law," he said. "There can be no doubt that such laws have been, and continue to be abused and exploited, to suppress free speech and put in place an oppressive infrastructure that represents a danger to our civil liberties."
"In such moments, all those who resist are acting in the public interest and are motivated by the desire to protect fundamental principles of fairness, equality, and justice," he added. "How can it be a crime to call for an end to apartheid and genocide? The planned action on August 9 is motivated by the highest moral principles that have underpinned our society and made it the envy of the world."
"Let us be under no illusion," said Begg. "The government is criminalizing the people of Britain for standing up against the biggest genocide of the 21st century, as it's livestreamed from Gaza. That is why it must be opposed."
Campaigners Confront Plastics Treaty Delegates, Demanding Deal That Stops Pollution 'At Its Source'
"With just days remaining, the dynamic must change," said Break Free From Plastic. "Countries must keep their commitment to end plastic pollution."
Aug 09, 2025
As the final negotiations for a Global Plastics Treaty reached the halfway point on Saturday, delegates entering the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland for the day's talks were met by more than 200 campaigners representing civil society groups who stood in silence along the path leading to the United Nations building—but nonetheless sent a clear message.
The civil society observers displayed signs in multiple languages, urging negotiators at the second plenary of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee to "fix the process" and keep their promises to drastically reduce plastic waste and toxic chemicals in plastic products.
Achieving goals like banning single-use plastics, capping plastic production, and imposing regulations on harmful additives within the treaty will be impossible, campaigners have warned, if the biggest plastic-producing countries like the United States are permitted to lobby for a weaker treaty and if fossil fuel industry lobbyists continue to overpower anti-pollution advocates at the talks.
"People worldwide have made it clear: They support decisive action to cut plastic production, consumption, and pollution," said the Break Free From Plastic movement in a statement Friday. "A majority of governments have endorsed these demands, yet negotiations are stalling with a small group of petro- and plastic-producing states deploying delay tactics, with no sign that they intend to raise ambition."
"With just days remaining, the dynamic must change," said the group. "Countries must keep their commitment to end plastic pollution. They must use every tool available to deliver a strong treaty—one that includes legally binding rules on production and chemicals, uplifts real solutions, safeguards human rights, and protects frontline communities."
The talks began earlier this week, with negotiators tasked with forging a legally binding treaty to restrict plastic pollution, following a 2022 agreement that was reached as the result of a proposal from Rwandan and Peruvian officials. The first round of talks, which were supposed to end with a treaty, stalled last December after plastic-producing countries refused to cap production. More than 100 countries at the negotiations agreed to a plastic production limit.
As with fossil fuel emissions, many countries in the Global South are not major producers of plastic waste—but the U.S. exports more than 1 billion pounds of plastic waste to low-income countries each year.
The climate action group Greenpeace has warned that fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists outnumber experts on the impact of pollution 4-to-1 at the negotiations in Geneva, and are joining oil- and plastic-producing countries in continuing to push for a treaty that focuses on downstream measures they claim will address pollution, such as improving recycling systems.
As Common Dreams reported Thursday, the Trump administration has called on countries participating in the talks to reject "impractical" terms within the treaty, such as plastic production caps, bans, or restrictions on certain additives to plastic products.
Scientists believe that less than 10% of plastic products ever get recycled, despite the efforts of individuals to recycle their products.
Katie Drews, national director of the U.S.-based Alliance for Mission-Based Recycling (AMBR), said Friday that "recycling is essential, but it cannot solve the plastics crisis," which must be stopped "at its source."
"Without binding caps on plastic production, bans on toxic chemicals, and global mandates to design packaging for safety, reuse, and real recyclability, downstream solutions will continue to be overwhelmed and communities will continue to pay the price," said Drews. "AMBR stands with scientists, health professionals, youth, frontline and fenceline communities, Indigenous peoples, waste pickers, and mission-driven allies worldwide in urging governments to act. We need a treaty that truly protects human and environmental health, one that goes beyond words to bold, enforceable action."
Advocates' concerns are backed up by a study published in The Lancet this week, which said that without far-reaching efforts to stop more plastic from being produced, "production is on track to nearly triple by 2060."
As campaigners and scientists have worked towards a Global Plastics Treaty since 2022, companies like Dow, Shell, and ExxonMobil have only been ramping up their production of plastic, expanding their capacity by 1.4 million tons. Just seven petrochemical giants have sent a combined 70 lobbyists to the talks, which are scheduled to wrap up on August 14.
"The more we produce, the more we pollute," said Jules Vagner, president of the French group Objectif Zéro Plastique. "Opposing binding targets to reduce plastic production is, in practice, choosing to let pollution continue and worse, accelerate. We do not want another treaty that manages waste. We want one that ends pollution at the source."
"If some countries are unwilling to rise to this historic moment, they should step aside," said Vagner. "Not block global progress. We want a world free from plastic pollution, not one that adapts to it."
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